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Drink

Ginger Beer

A fermented ginger beverage made with sugar, ginger, cream of tartar or lemon, yeast on bread, and boiled water.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Ginger Beer

Ingredients

Directions

Make the brew

  1. In a gallon of boiling water, stir in the loaf sugar and bruised ginger.

  2. Add cream of tartar or sliced lemon until the mixture cools to the temperature of new milk.

  3. Pour the yeast onto a piece of bread and place it in the center of the mixture.

  4. Cover with a cloth and let it stand for 24 hours.

Bottle and serve

  1. Strain the mixture and pour it into bottles, filling each about three-quarters full.

  2. Cork the bottles tightly and tie them down.

  3. In warm weather, the ginger beer will be ready to drink in two days.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  2. Sugar + gingertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together14,054 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  3. Ginger + breadtop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together565 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  4. Cream + breadtop 24% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together5,789 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-decalactone (sweet, creamy).

  5. Ginger + creamtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together2,137 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Sugar and ginger barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 14,054 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Loaf sugar
Feeds the yeast and provides the sweetness of the finished drink.
Bruised ginger
Supplies the characteristic spicy aroma and flavour.
Cream of tartar or sliced lemon
Adds acidity that gives the drink its tang.
Good yeast
Ferments the sugar, producing carbon dioxide that carbonates the drink.

The step that matters

Cork the bottles tightly. Fermentation keeps producing carbon dioxide after bottling. If the bottles are not sealed tightly, the gas escapes and the drink stays flat; sealed too well, pressure can build inside the bottle.

Swap the ginger

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, cream, bread):

  1. Nutmegfits better
  2. Cinnamonfits better
  3. Celeryfits about as well
  4. Gingerthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, cream, bread. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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